Gay Rights Group Slams Cheney After Announcement of Daughter's Pregnancy

Dec. 6, 2005 — -- STATEMENT BY JENNIFER CHRISLER OF FAMILY PRIDE:

The front page of the Washington Post's Web site announced today that Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's gay daughter, is pregnant. Mary and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are described as "ecstatic" about the arrival of their first child, due in late spring.

The news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents. As Mary and Heather enter into the life-changing roles of parents, they will quickly face the reality that no matter how loved their child will be -- by its mothers and its grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and close family-friends -- he or she will never have the same protections that other children born to heterosexual couples enjoy. Mary and Heather currently live in Virginia. Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child.

The tragedy here is that this climate of hostility toward the LGBT community has only worsened during the administration of which Vice President Cheney -- or Grandfather Cheney in this context -- has been second-in-command. Vice President Cheney has been complicit in the largest full-scale attack on the LGBT community in modern history. He, his president, and his political party, have repeatedly targeted the LGBT community and LGBT families for scapegoating as part of their calculated political strategy and have attacked at all levels the rights and protections his own daughter will need to ensure a strong, healthy, legally protected family.

Grandfather Cheney will no doubt face a lifetime of sleepless nights as he reflects on the irreparable harm he and his administration have done to the millions of American gay and lesbian parents and their children.